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Using Siri could become much easier in the future. Apple engineers are reportedly working on shortening the trigger phrase "Hey Siri" to the assistant's name.
All Apple device users are familiar with saying "Hey Siri" before making a request. While it's easy enough to speak two words into an iPhone, Apple wants to reduce the effort by using just one word: "Siri." Engineers are working on the problem, which seems simple enough to solve. But in reality, there are a lot of things to consider. As Mark Gurman explains in the "Power On" newsletter reported, the project requires significant retraining of the AI as well as “fundamental technical work” to achieve the goal.
Apple wants to stop Siri from saying “Hey”
Part of the problem is that you have to teach Siri not only to understand her own name, but also to do so for all languages, accents, and dialects. Furthermore, it is much easier for a speech recognition system to correctly recognize a longer sentence that it is actively searching for than a short single word consisting of two similar-sounding syllables. In contrast, the three-syllable "Alexa" wake word is easier to recognize due to its length and the different syllable sounds. If Apple can shorten the wake phrase to "Siri," it will have a major advantage over other digital assistant makers, if only for the ease of triggering. Its main competitor, Google, still relies on the phrases "OK Google" and "Hey Google" and would face the same problems as Apple if it made a similar change, although it has been working on shortening the phrase to "Google" for follow-up requests.
“Siri” change could appear in 2023 or 2024
Work on this is ongoing, Gurman reports, but it may still be some time before the change is officially rolled out. Currently, Gurman expects the Siri change to appear sometime in 2023 or 2024. One reason for the slow progress could be Apple's strong commitment to privacy, which has so far hampered the development of new features for Siri. Shortening the trigger phrase is not the only development Apple is making with its digital assistant. Apple is also reportedly trying to open up Siri so that the voice assistant works better with third-party apps and services to make Siri a ubiquitous assistant with a wider reach. (Photo by Unsplash / Drew Perales)
